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Monday, 29 April 2013

Taxpayer to foot bill for interpreter pay riseA 22%
hike in payments to courtroom interpreters is set to knock a large hole in
savings forecast by the government under its ill-starred initiative to contract
out the service.The
Ministry of Justice revealed last week that it would foot the bill for the
extra payments, in its response to a damning report from the House of Commons
justice committee into the contract with Capita Translation and Interpreting
(formerly Applied Language Solutions).In
February 2012 the Gazette was first to report that the central arrangements
were causing problems for courts, partly because interpreters were refusing to
work under the contract’s terms.In a
parliamentary statement, Helen Grant, courts minister, tacitly admitted that
the contract was not acceptable to interpreters by saying the new terms ‘will
have a direct effect on performance levels by attracting more interpreters to
register to work as well as encourage those already registered to undertake
more bookings’.A
spokeswoman confirmed that the MoJ rather than Capita would pick up the bill
for the improved terms, which Grant said would have ‘a direct impact on
take-home pay’.The MoJ
awarded the contract to Applied in August 2011, on a bid £50m lower than the
nearest rival. Within weeks the company was acquired by Capita. The government
had expected the deal to save £125m over five years.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Justice (Mrs Helen Grant):

Today, the Government responded to the Justice
Committee report “Interpreting and translation services and the Applied Language
Solutions contract”. This sets out some of the work which has already taken
place and some which is planned in order to bring about improvements to the
contract and the associated Framework Agreement for the justice sector.

Part of this work was to review the current terms
and conditions for interpreters under the contract in discussion with Capita
and taking into account the feedback from groups of interpreters. I can
announce that several changes will come into effect in May this year which will
have a direct impact on take-home pay for interpreters. We are confident that
these measures are affordable for the taxpayer, but will also have a direct
effect on performance levels by attracting more interpreters to register to
work, as well as encourage those already registered to undertake more bookings.

The changes address a number of concerns that
interpreters have raised with the Department and Capita and include paying
interpreters at their qualified tier and in 15 minute blocks, extending the use
of mileage payments and introducing cancellation fees where the hearing is
cancelled or runs significantly shorter than expected through no fault of the
interpreter. We are also introducing a fee to cover incidental costs that the
interpreter might incur.

Other work is ongoing in our challenge to Capita to
improve performance under the contract.